"What is below is like that which is above,
and what is above is like that which is below." - Tabula Smaragdina (the
Emerald Tablet)

metals and planets

Saturn

Jupiter

Mars

Sun

Venus

Mercury

Moon

lead

tin

iron

gold

copper

mercury

silver

releasing spirit from base matter – pneuma, psyche, hyle

one and the many

Olympiodorus and the purification of spirit

Zosimus and the liberation of spirit from matter

divine origin of alchemy

Olympiodorus, In Phaed. 1.3 =OF 220

Then Dionysus succeeds
Zeus. Through the scheme of Hera, they say, his retainers, the Titans, tear him
to pieces and eat his flesh.Zeus,
angered by the deed, blasts them with his thunderbolts, and from the sublimate
of the vapors that rise from them comes the matter from which men are
created.Therefore we must not
kill ourselves, not because, as the text appears to say, we are in the body as
a kind of shackle, for that is obvious, and Socrates would not call this a
mystery; but we must not kill ourselves because our bodies are Dionysiac; we
are, in fact, a part of him, if indeed we come about from the sublimate of the
Titans who ate his flesh.

áTrue, without error, certain and most true: that which is above is
as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, to
perform the miracles of the One Thing.

áAnd as all things were from One, by the meditation of One, so from
this One Thing come all things by adaptation. Its father is the Sun, its mother
is the Moon, the wind carried it in its belly, the nurse thereof is the Earth.

áIt is the father of all perfection and the consummation of the
whole world. Its power is integral if it be turned to Earth.

áThou shalt separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the
coarse, gently and with much ingenuity. It ascends from Earth to heaven and descends
again to Earth, and receives the power of the superiors and the inferiors.

áThus thou hast the glory of the whole world; therefore let all
obscurity flee before thee. This is the strong fortitude of all fortitude,
overcoming every subtle and penetrating every solid thing. Thus the world was
created. Hence are all wonderful adaptations, of which this is the manner.

áTherefore am I called Hermes the Thrice Great, having the three
parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That is finished which I have to
say concerning the operation of the Sun.